The Atlanta Hawks need to snap their home skid against the Rockets
If the Atlanta Hawks are going to take advantage of an Eastern Conference that has largely failed to separate itself, they need to start now. Sitting at 13-13 and ninth in the standings won’t cut it, though they would still qualify for the play-in tournament if the season ended today.
It doesn’t, fortunately, as the Hawks have much greater aspirations.
Their 113-105 loss to the Brooklyn Nets on Friday resurfaced some familiar issues they’ve had with closing out tight games. The bigger, and perhaps more concerning angle is they have now lost four in a row at home.
An 8-5 record at home is a far cry from making it the tough place to play that both players and coaches expressed as a goal coming into the season.
It will also put quite the damper on their hopes of attaining homecourt advantage if they can even solidify their playoff standing.
The Atlanta Hawks have struggled to score and get stops at State Farm Arena lately
Atlanta has watched opponents average 105.7 points at State Farm Arena this season, 12th-fewest in the NBA. Over the last four games, however, that number has spiked to 113.7 points per game in their gym,18th in the league. Meanwhile, their offense has gone from scoring 112 points at home this year to 109.3 over this skid.
The Houston Rockets come in offering a chance at both stopping the home skid and getting back over .500 again.
After starting the season 1-16 with a 15 game losing streak, the Rockets went on to win seven in a row as a variety of factors led to a turn of fortune. They lost second-overall pick Jalen Green to a hamstring injury at the outset of their streak and then lost Kevin Porter five games in.
They’ve since lost their last two games with neither guard close to returning for this matchup.
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Those losses also came on a back-to-back with Houston having just one day off before taking on the Hawks who will have had a couple of days to stew on their flop late against the Nets who stymied them with switchy big man Nicolas Claxton, something they’ve done to several opponents this season.
Houston is on the other end of that spectrum, tied with the Phoenix Suns (surprisingly) in allowing the fourth-most fourth-quarter points per game overall and is 16th in opponents’ fourth-quarter points on the road.
Atlanta is 17th in fourth-quarter points allowed per game at home but, more importantly, they are just 23rd in fourth-quarter scoring.
The latter number needs to come up even if the former stays steady. Until then, the Hawks will continue to struggle to put away teams and suffer tough losses like the one they had against Brooklyn.
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Getting Cam Reddish back in that game will help going forward. They also have recalled Jalen Johnson and Sharife Cooper while sending Skylar Mays back to College Park. But this will be incumbent upon Trae Young, John Collins, and Clint Capela as the top guys on this team to right this ship